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Critics complain that its static nature stigmatizes the wheelchairs as instruments of helplessness and passivity. In 2005, VSA, an international organization on arts and disability, produced a more active icon implying self-propulsion (third from left). At least one store, in Cambridge, MA., strengthened this impression by adding cartoon-like motion arcs to the wheel. To date, I haven’t seen these last two in wide use, but I sure like them better.

I was led through this history by Sara Hendren, an artist whose work focuses on disability issues, and who blogs at ablersite.org. For the last year, Hendren has kept tabs on human icons in everyday signage, and found herself “astonished to see how animated and evocative these signs can be.”

Hendren was initially tempted to recreate the ISA from scratch, but instead decided to “edit” it by adding color and motion. Using a mini-grant from the Awesome Foundation (a story in themselves), Hendren and a collaborator, philosopher Brian Glenney, created clear plastic decals that can be overlaid upon existing, old-style accessibility signs, jazzing them up in the process.

“I felt strongly that our decision to edit the image should make its own process visible, resulting in this clear-backed icon that fits over a number of standard, traditional signs,” Hendren wrote recently. “The juxtaposition of old and new draws attention to the comparison, and to the unconscious ways we consume images that drive our ideas about one another.”

If you would like some of these stickers, Hendren will send them free, as long as you promise to document their use. Email her at sarahendren @ gmail dot com.

One in One Thousand - The forgotten legacy of James McGregor Stewart

James McGregor Stewart, 1889-1955, son of a Pictou lawyer, grandson of a Cape Breton minister, was a principal of Stewart, McKelvey, the downtown Halifax law firm. In his time he was Nova Scotia’s premier corporate lawyer, and he wrote the rules for many of our most successful and long-lived companies. He was president of the Canadian Bar between the wars. He is one of fewer than 500 Canadians to be awarded the Commander of the British Empire for services to the Empire in WW II. His obituary was in the New York Times.
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